Dead Bird? Homewood presses pause on scooters for 60 days

Cities which enable innovative cultures attract more innovation — both internally and externally. Bird scooters have a chance to improve mobility in Homewood, and I hope we get to test them out as a new transportation option. But given what I saw at the recent city council meeting, especially from Bird’s representatives, I’m less than optimistic. My hope is that our council has the foresight to look past Bird’s flaws and take a progressive stance towards new ideas, both from Bird and other future innovators.

On Monday, September 10, I had a front-row seat at the Homewood City Council meeting which discussed the Bird business license. At the meeting was a representative from Bird, who answered the council’s questions about their recent deployment into the city.

The council seemed to hone in on two issues:

• They were upset with Bird for dropping off scooters without going through the correct approval channels. Multiple council members spoke passionately about their disapproval with the way Bird brought scooters to Homewood.
• The were rightfully concerned about safety.

Prior to the meeting Chris Winslett (the owner of this blog) and I reached out to the council to ask if we could speak at the meeting. We received this response:

Tonight is a discussion regarding their deployment in the city with no business license. The meeting is open to the public and all are welcome to attend. If you or your friend have something to share by all means come and request to speak.

I’m a bit embarrassed to say that in my 10 years living in Homewood I have yet to attend a city council meeting. Despite being a first-timer, I wrote up a few notes, headed over, checked out the directory in front of City Hall (they meet on the 2nd floor), and entered the meeting prepared to speak.

When I walked in a representative from Bird had just begun addressing the council. After he spoke the council began to take a motion, a moratorium of sorts, that would table discussion of Bird for 60 days. During this time Bird would not be allowed to operate in Homewood. Prior to the vote being cast I raised my hand to ask if I could address the council. As a first time attendee, I’m not sure of the correct decorum for getting the council’s attention. Whatever I did didn’t work, because council President Bruce Limbaugh, acting put off and clearly not impressed with my interruption, told me “this is not a public hearing and you are not allowed to speak.”

And that was that. The moratorium was passed, and I left.

Here are some of my takeaways from the meeting:

• Both in Homewood and Birmingham, a lot has been made about the fact that Bird didn’t get a business license prior to beginning operations. Council members were visibly upset about this at the meeting. What keeps getting missed in this conversation is the fact that there isn’t an existing regulatory framework that would allow Bird to operate. There is no license to buy. Lime, Bird’s competitor, came to the City of Birmingham early in the year and tried to get one. They predictably got nowhere. Bird’s has decided to force the issue instead of waiting months or years to come into town. It needs to be recognized that Bird’s unceremonious roll out clearly accelerated the conversation at the Homewood council.
• Bird sent a representative from Texas to represent them. This guy was green and the council ate him up. He was completely unprepared for both of the council’s lines of attack (business licenses and safety). When asked about safety, specifically on whether Bird would indemnify the city against accidents, he could not speak coherently on the issue. At one point he said “I’m not an attorney and I’ll have to get back with you.” At another point he said “I’m sorry, I’ve only been on the job for a month.” The fact that Bird doesn’t train their reps to knock the safety question out of the park is an embarrassment. If training at Bird lasts 100 hours, they should spend 99 hours talking about safety and the last hour on how to apologize graciously for the aggressive roll-out. If Bird doesn’t have legitimate answers to safety concerns, they shouldn’t be operating in Birmingham or anywhere else.
• One or two councilors defended the scooters, suggesting that they might be an interesting mode of transportation, meshing well with expanded bike lanes. They were quickly shot down though, with one exchange ending with a councilor saying “I can’t imagine why anyone would want this, I haven’t talked to anyone that would want to ride one.” It was pointed out how Homewood is walkable and doesn’t need scooters. It’s true, Homewood is walkable, but I can’t help but imagine that scooters could make transportation between places like West Homewood, Edgewood, Central Avenue, Downtown, and SoHo easier. It seems like scooters could work really well given Homewood’s configuration.
• Prior to the vote the mayor spoke about how the council should continue to take this issue seriously and progressively. His words were appreciated.

So Bird is gone for 60 days. After that, who knows? Yes, Bird’s roll out was tough to stomach for local government. And yes, they sent an unprepared rep to face the council. Bird has gone from zero to billions of dollars in valuation practically overnight and I’m sure management’s hair is on fire at every corner of the company. But at the end of the day, despite their many predictable flaws, they are an interesting new service that being successfully tested in many cities around the US. They were willing to come to Homewood and essentially run a pilot test for free on whether this is a viable transportation option for our citizens. Assuming the higher-ups at Bird can answer our council’s safety concerns, my hope is that in 60 days they are given a provisional license to test their concept.

Why do I care so much about scooters? I rode a Bird. It was fun and the app technology was slick. I’d ride one again. I think they’re interesting, but I don’t have a scooter crystal ball. They may ultimately not be a good fit here and could crash as a company as quickly as they have risen. For me though, this isn’t only about scooters. What I care about is how we as a community treat new innovation. When a few hundred electric scooters show up in our city, I’d hope we’d react with cautious curiosity. How did they get here? Who brought them? What’s frustrated me is inherent skepticism with which they’ve been met by some. We were one of the last major cities to get Uber and we’re on a bad trajectory with Bird.

This will happen again. There will be more companies like Bird that arrive unannounced. I’d encourage the council to come up with guidelines on how to proactively deal with other out-of-state innovations that show up on our streets. Bird just raised $400 million dollars. If they were headquartered here they would be held out as one of the brightest lights in our entrepreneurial ecosystem. But why would someone here think to start such a company if they knew they weren’t welcome to operate it at home? How we react to new innovation sends a signal to how we feel about innovators within our own community.